Yeah I'm going to give that campaign a go. Realms of Chaos. Apparently the idea is to build your doomstack army and not expand too much. That army then does all the lifting through the campaign as you venture in to the realms.

I had read that the bigger you grow the more bonuses the AI factions get. True?

Anyway, it's linear, and focused and I'll give it a go at some point. Just not sure how I'll take to the mechanics and objective in this one. My Cathay game is hanging in the balance, so I might switch it up.

The Prologue Campaign is a tutorial campaign I'm finding out. It's not quite the Realms of Chaos. You have no choice in what faction to play - you play Kislev. There's a storyline for it that isn't too bad. I figure I'll finish it off and then pick something else for the main Campaign, then give IE a whirl.

I have no idea if the AI gets bonuses based on your growth, as you progress, the enemies get a little bigger and badder, but that is probably to be expected in this type of campaign. It's very scripted, I don't think there's much replayability in it. The Realms of Chaos is probably much more open in that regard.

Yes, but doesn't that tutorial just lead in to the campaign proper? I think that's how it worked in WH2, the prologue took you through the early moves and then it just bled in to the main campaign. But maybe you don't want to play Kizlev.

Kizzzleeeevvvv

I righted the ship in my teetering campaign by loading a save three turns earlier and, wise to what was about to happen, dealt with it. Cathay once again controls all the gates and my borders are properly secured, if not literally so.

Immortal Empires is a massive campaign as we know, and it's in a really good spot. The action among the AI factions is insane, very aggressive, and actually effective. The campaign AI seems finely tuned to serve up a good campaign. Top dog changes every turn it seems as the fortunes of war favor, and then frown upon the various factions around the map. At turn 70 the pile has been reduced to the last 100 factions or so. There are also short campaign objectives, and I reckon, on Cathay's evidence anyway, they are the easiest yet. In this run I only have to hold six key regions, all of which I have already in my first 25 settlements, and to capture, sack or raze 30 towns which I've nearly done. I like campaigns that can be done and dusted in about 100 turns. There's a long option too which extends that 30 out to 70. Each faction will have its own objectives, but I expect they'll all be more or less in line.

Many features and mechanics return from Warhammer 2 and I forgot some of them after playing so much of Rome 2 and Three Kingdoms. One of these is the trait system, which I both like and wish were somewhat different. But the way it is means your lords gain massive amounts of traits and bonuses. Unlike many TW titles, traits are gained by what the lord does. For example if you put him or her in to ambush stance often, ambush chance bonuses are gained. Or if you win battles against Dark Elves, the lord get bonuses when fighting them. I like this a lot, and your lords become exceptionally powerful when they are used often. Defeating a Legendary lord grants another strong bonus unique to that character. My lords have so many 'effects' that you have to scroll quite a bit to read through them.

One of Cathay's mechanics as mentioned is Harmony, and it extends to the battlefield. Formation fighters is what they are, as Harmony is achieved when placed near other units, granting several bonuses including leadership and melee defense. That's how I play anyway so it dovetails nicely. I like the Cathay roster, it has a little of everything aside from monstrous units. Good infantry, crossbows and artillery.

One major change to WH3 that I was unaware of is an overhaul of the settlement battle mechanics, with supplies and control points redone, and where you can build defenses during the battle. Not sure yet how much better it is, but at least CA is looking at what has always been one of the series' missed marks. I'd say this is a step in the right direction? Maybe?

The Harmony mechanic I've talked about has proven to be not as cool as I thought, due to the fact that holding it in balance is fiddly indeed. Just one point either side of it breaks Harmony. Letting it go too far to one side is painful, so you have to be mindful of it. But it's too fine to focus on it and hold it steady on zero. Still, I like unique faction mechanics and this one fits the bill.

One more thing, Cathay has a unique mechanic called Caravans. These are armies that you delegate to travel to other factions to the west to conduct trade. You choose the destination and path, but the travel is automatic, broken up by events which you react to including bonuses, recruited units, sacrifices of your units to the hungry ambushing ogres, or fighting battles in real time. All routes go west and end around the Empire, Dwarfs, Vampire Counts region (WH1 Old World), and depending on relations with the various factions along the way, the caravan may be in peril. If it reaches the destination you get paid. It's a neat mechanic to keep the coffers filled and fight more battles along the way.

I'll let you know if the tutorial campaign leads to the regular one. I'm about 50 turns in so far, and units are still very limited. I'd like to finish the campaign but Kislev as a whole seems a bit underwhelming. I don't think all the goodies are rolled out for this mini campaign though. I've seen mention of a unique Kislev mechanic called "Devotion" which has not been mentioned thus far. It really does slow roll various mechanics though. I was about 45 turns in before I was able to pick a stance for my Lords army.

Update - just finished off the prologue campaign. It fleshes out some of the story you hear if you watch the cinematic opening to the Realm of Chaos campaign, but doesn't lead directly to playing that campaign. You still wind up in the main screen with all your options.
I think I'll take a crack at the Tzeentch and see what they are all about.

Thanks for the info. Either they changed it or a I forgot how it worked, which seems likely haha. Did you enjoy the run through? 50+ turns is a hell of a prologue.

My Cathay run is done and dusted on 97 turns. I should say Northern Provinces, as that's the faction. That was a super campaign. The combat is fantastic in this game.I played on normal/normal and honestly it felt like Very Hard/Very Hard from earlier games. Maybe it's the strength of the enemy armies and not anything to do with bonuses. But I fought some brutal, long-brawl battles in this run, and lost a fair few too. My enemies were mainly Chaos armies, and these are no joke. Stack building's in a really good place for the AI, I felt like I was seeing their best units, and with such a clear focus on Chaos in Warhammer 3 they are strong with some fabulous abilities. Did they just teleport? Forget the Underway, these dudes can just flash around the map. Many units have a blue health bar in addition to red, and what is this, magical armor? They also go heavy on monstrous units that are strong in battle. Some have regen and have amazing staying power. Luckily, Cathay has some good infantry that have 'charge defense against all' and that's one of the best abilities in the game. You need it

The achievements for winning a campaign in Immortal Empires either don't work, or CA decided that short campaigns are not worthy. Others work fine. I missed out on two Cathay achievements, both for 'occupying' a certain place, and surely it's because I got those locations through confederation. So something to be aware of if achievement hunting.

The Northern Provinces campaign is challenging since you have a constant war with the forces of Chaos, who don't fook around. Defending the Great Bastion to the north, while defending all points all while pushing out your borders will test your mettle. In my run I expanded mostly south and east, taking out Deathmaster Snikch and Clan Eshin along the way. The Blessed Dread were my main enemy though the mid to late game. When we went to war they were number 1 on the charts. When the run ended they were 97th out of 100. But Dark Elves are strong, great infantry, AP archers and the Murderous Prowess ability. But this sort of thing could be said about virtually every faction on the map. They all have their strengths, don't they?

Cathay have some very good foot units, the mid-tier Jade Warriors and Jade Crossbows carried me through the game. There is a also a 'sniper' unit called Crane Gunners which are like Skaven's Jezzails. Great focus-fire performers. Awesome against flying units like dragons. Awesome against anything. The top infantry, Celestial Dragon Guard, are a match for any in the game, but take two turns to recruit so I didn't make many since it's rare I could sit still that long. Artillery is also a strength, with a number of options including hot-air balloon-like flying artillery. Miao Ying starts with a Sky-Junk which did great work throughout the run. Sort of like a flying Helstorm. Iron hail Gunners hit super hard and are AP, but a really small firing arc means they are perfect for turning around the corner after the line is joined and ripping up the engaged units with flanking fire. They feel like a better version of Vampire Coast's Deck Gunners. The ranged options are really strong for Cathay.

Cavalry and monstrous units are the weaknesses. Just three cav options, and I rolled though nearly the whole campaign with just the light peasant horsemen. Used for archer and arty disruption and chasing down routers as these units won't do well in melee against a good unit. Top-tier Great Longma Riders are good. Very fast flying unit but I only had two by the end. No monstrous units in the roster, but you might get them through a new mechanic called Outposts, which you and your allies can build in your allies' towns, offering some recruitment options from your ally's roster pool. Terracotta Sentinels are the titan unit, and I had just two of these at the end and not many chances to use them. But this is the sort of unit that could win battles on it's own. Armor-piercing, causes fear, standard stuff for this type of unit (like Tomb Kings and Vampire Coast have).

So overall a really nice roster with good options in the key types, especially if you like ranged in TW like I do. They play a lot like Dwarfs. The IE start location means you'll be pitted against game-long top-tier enemies as you defend the wall. I was so impressed with the Chaos enemies' abilites to give me a difficult time that I'll need to play them myself haha. This is how I came to love Skaven.

It was good to get back in the TW groove, I haven't played it in a while and am not very experienced in the series as a whole either. But they dribbled things out a bit too slowly, and I didn't have access to the campaign map either, and that was frustrating. Faction specific mechanics were left out, which makes sense for a tutorial I guess. It may be confusing to a new player to learn X mechanic as Kislev, fire up a Realms of Chaos campaign as another faction, and not see that mechanic at all.

Good stuff on Cathay. I'm going to go for a Tzeentch campaign and see what's what with them.

I decided to play The Lost God prologue and I'm really enjoying it. About 15 turns in. I dig the ice queen vibe, even if Yuri's a prince. I think it's nicely done. Best tutorial I've seen in the series yet. And I can see now why you went past 50 turns. It's the yin to the sandbox's yang, but I'm OK with that, especially when it's so nicely crafted as this is.

Do you have all three games and Immortal Empires JC?

He was one of my main tormentors in that Cathay game. Strong in the AI's hands, and in the player's I suspect he can be insane.

The ice queen was cool, I embedded her in my army to good effect. She is also pretty good on her own. The tutorial is very well scripted, I agree. Make sure you let the dialog play out - sometimes there are events that fire after dialog and if you move too quickly they won't fire. I wound up having to go back to an old save because of this. Only lost a turn or so, no big inconvenience, but it had me going for a few minutes.



Yes, I do. I plan on giving IE a whirl at some point too.

Good advice, thanks.

I'm 40 turns in to the prologue, and you know, if I were just starting out in Total War this is what I'd love to see. That ship sailed nearly 20 years ago. Still, it's quite well done and each feature is introduced at a smooth pace to ease newcomers in to the game.

I also poked around the RoC campaigns, playing a turn as several different factions to get a feel for them. Mostly they were Chaos, and I just can't connect. Too foul, too evil. though I liked pirate zombies and rats just fine. But these Chaos factions don't seem to be for me, which I could have figured out before buying the DLC! Warhammer 3 is like Borderlands 3. Loved the gameplay, didn't care for the mains.

Having played Cathay already, I was left with one real choice. So I started a RoC campaign as the Ice Court, and the early going is fun. There have been some tweaks to this campaign since the release and maybe it's in a good place now.

I'm finding Tzeench interesting. They don't have great melee, but they have very good ranged units. The melee apparently catches up at the end though and become pretty serviceable according to what I've read.
They have an interesting mechanic, Changing of the Ways, which uses a unique currency - the Grimoire. Grimoires can be accumulated by various means - buildings, quests, etc. It's basically a collection of spells (Tzeentch is magic heavy)
which gives you some interesting options, not the least of which is flipping a settlement to you. There is a 10 turn cooldown, and it is a little expensive, but I've used it twice so far and it has been quite a nice way to gather some territories.
You can also establish outposts with allies, though I'm not sure of the exact mechanics behind that.

They have some pretty cool looking units too - I think they have a vaguely Skaven-esque feel to them in that regard. They are slow going in the early rounds, I can only recruit 2 units per turn rather than three, so growing the army is a slow process,
And like I said - they are a bit squishy. But the key I think is go slow and build both armies and settlements to the point you can start throwing your weight around with a bit more success. Probably best to avoid Cathay for now and focus on some of the
southern neighbors.

Those ranged units gave me some trouble in the Cathay run. The ones that fire pink-hued missiles were nasty. They must have short range (90?) as they had to move well inside my arcs to get their shots off. In that Miao Ying run my crossbows had 200 range, which is excellent, due to the buffs and skills I took. Just about any AI archer units would need to move inside those arcs!

One of the things I didn't like about the Chaos factions I ran through yesterday was the sounds they make when you click the unit on the battlefield. Total War has always had this, Equites! the men would shout in Rome 1. But those Chaos things squeak and chitter and I just couldn't deal lol.

Your run is RoC? I hope you keep reporting because I'd like to know how it's going for comparison.

Outposts are pretty cool. I like their potential, especially if your faction has glaring holes in the roster. I didn't use it much as Cathay, as my allies were same race and therefore have the same units. But the possibilities are good, and gives a real reason to look to ally a faction rather than end their existence. I hope to use it in this Kizlev run to obtain some of the Empire's artillery.

I was reading some stuff about my faction today and everyone seems to say that Kizlev is possibly the most difficult faction to play in this campaign. Might have been a poor choice, or maybe I can do well anyway. The fact is though that I struggled to connect with the others, aside from Cathay, thematically at least. I might enjoy their mechanics. But I'd like to finish RoC at least once so I've thrown in with this lot and let's see how it goes.

I'm about 30 turns in to the Ice Court RoC run, and so far so good. I like it so far, but the rotten part may lie ahead. Or maybe the stuff everyone complained about has been made better?

The first rift wave has opened, and this one's not bad at all. Actually, it feels like rebel farming. When the rifts opened I expected full Chaos stacks, but they are half stacks. If it's like Vortex, these are only the scouts, and the heavy hitters will be along in successive waves. I have yet to enter the realms of chaos as I only have two armies, and I want to leave two on the mortal sphere before taking the dive in to the portal, where the legendary lord is gone for multiple turns. I don't want to come back and find my empire has been ransacked.

Playing this one on normal/normal and it's all gone well so far. Katarin has a mechanic called the Ice Court, which is used to train new Frost Maidens and Ice Witches. It's kind of cool, because even though it takes six turns to train them, you get to select three traits along the way. Each trait choice is a binary one, so there's not a ton of leeway here. But it allows you to sort of customize these characters before they show up in the recruitment pool. This faction has another mechanic where we are in a race with another Kizlev faction for 'supporters'. The first one to hit 600 wins the race, gets some good faction bonuses and confederates the other. I found out too late that battles with other Kizlev factions give a -2 supporters and so I have fallen way behind in this race. But I think I'll nick it at the end

One thing I do like about RoC is the fact that you can play tall. Two or three provinces is all you need, to get income and recruitment sorted. Not sure if in the end I will like or dislike this campaign, the rifts are the worst part about it -- evidently -- and I have yet to see them. But that's next. My first Ice Witch has graduated from the academy. What I want to do is transfer Katarin's army, or most of it, to the new lord so that I can refill Katarin's army with her favored Ice Guard units and other late-game stuff. But I need a level 5 city and that takes time. Tall play is given a big boost by having two ten-slot cities, which are very rare in Warhammer and Total War for that matter, only the most sacred and famous ones have been ten, like Skavenblight or Karak Eight Peaks. It must be done here to these Kizlev cites for just this reason, supporting tall play. There is one more I am to take, some distance to the west along the seas. Erengrad or somesuch. But I hope to get this when confederating after winning the motherland supporter race. Even without it, this campaign is easily viable for tall play, and probably designed to be. It feels to me like you want to expand enough to be able to support at least three stacks, with one being your LL realm diver.

Since it's my first go at this one, I'm sort of in that half-space where I don't know the best way to go about things. For example should I enter the first wave? Other factions have already jumped in and one has succeeded. I am falling behind. But my army's a mid-tier one at this point, I have yet to build up to recruit my best units, and don't have artillery yet. Since this rift wave opened inside or about 30 turns I suspect it's expected you'll go in with a army like mine so I'll just do it. But then you wonder, which realm should I do first and plenty of other questions. Only one way to find out!

Building an outpost lets you build units from that faction that can be recruited at the city the outpost is built in. If you fully upgrade it, you can build anything that faction can. As Dbond pointed out it can let you fill in gaps in your roster. It is expensive and IIRC you can only do it while in the encampment stance.

As for jumping into the realms, you can usually skip the first one, sometimes two and not fall too far behind. If you do skip two, you better blitz the next couple until you're in the lead. The Slaneesh realm is a miserable long slog, mostly because it's long and you have tons of gates to go through, it just takes awhile. Khorn is short, but your army will usually fight a few battles in a short period of time....and those fights are against Khorne armies which can be tough. The Nurgle one is generally easy and short with the caveat that the army will take a ton of attrition, so you'll need something to mitigate that or some high casualty replenishment to allow a turn once and a while to recover. Depending on how often you gotta stop to recover, it can extend your time here. Tzeench is annoying due to the teleports.

Once you complete all the realms the final phase will start and you'll have a hard capped time limit to complete the rest of the game and that final battle can be tough.

Kostaltyn (one of the Kislev lords) has such a rough start due to his first couple provinces being a couple 4 slot towns. Even the capital is a little town. Makes it hard to build tall when you're limited to lvl 3 buildings and only a couple at that.

Thanks for that insight Wormfood. Which realm would you recommend first? I dropped two points so far in to Katarin's blue-line attrition skill, in advance of the nurgle expedition. Not much more to fight it at the mo. I can drop another point there. Can you do more than one dive per rift wave?

I turns out I did indeed miss the first portal. With about 8 turns to go before the rifts would time out, I did one of the quest battles to get Katarin her unique armor, to complete the set with her weapon, and give some bonuses before jumping in to the first gate. But it was such a brutal battle against Tzeench that my army was shredded and needed five turns to replenish. That would leave three to jump in the gate, but I guess the AI closed the few remaining gates and it was over with 5 turns to spare. So I missed it, and it's good to know it's not fatal to the campaign.

I was wrong about needing level 5 city to get Ice Guard and artillery. So I can start building these now and get ready for the next round of rifts. But it'll put a strain on to create that third stack and then refill Katarin's army. The rifts pop up everywhere, though there's a building line to reduce or eliminate these in that province. And the first wave was pretty beneficial to my faction. I only have two mortal world enemies, who are being blunted by Kostaltyn to the west. So these rifts spewing Chaos armies gave me targets, which I need to feed the Devotion and supporter race mechanics. Plus it trains up your lords and armies. And these Chaos armies only seem to look to raze, and I got two more settlements out of it, when a neighbor had them razed and I then colonized it before they could react. I gotta say this has been done to me a few times now in my few campaigns, so I'm just giving as good as I'm getting haha.

If these rift waves just grow stronger and stronger then it could get messy in a hurry. But that first one was good for the Ice Court.

I like Kizlev alot. Their roster is heavy on hybrids, and their ranged side is strong, as good as most mid-level archer units, plus they have good armor. Their ability to shred the approaching line and then stand up in melee is really good. I dig the whole vibe with Katarin's faction.

I think the Nurgle realm is probably the easiest. Usually by the time you jump in there you should have something to mitigate the attrition. The Teenzch and Slaneesh ones aren't terrible they're just a pain to get around. Khorne varies on your army. It's a bunch of fights in a small space, but since it's against Khorne armies you need to have an army ready to pummel them from afar so you don't take too many losses. If you have that, it's usually a cinch. So, to answer the question, if you have strong ranged and artillery Khorne, if you lack that or aren't sure do Nurgle as the first realms.

I haven't played in awhile, but back then there was not way to mitigate the chaos gate spawns, they popped up in every region every time. It was a pain. And since you had to whisk away an army to a realm and you're being attacked on all sides and from within made things a pain. The bigger you grew, the bigger your borders and the more internal gates you had spawn in. You were incentivized to build as tall as possible in as little space as possible and blitz the campaign before anyone else could build up. That and with the huge anti player bias it had at launch made it a hectic and not very fun campaign.

Yes, that tracks. Evidently they tweaked the player bias, but if so I can only cringe at the thought of what that must have been like, because even 'tweaked' the dog pile is real.

I praised the first rift wave as a gift to the Ice Court. The second has been less so. I had completely thrown out my 'stay tall' plan and expanded quite a bit, through conquest and confederation, including the Enclave which held Erengrad. All good. But during the second wave the rift spawns were everywhere, and the difficulty doubled with mortal-world armies running amok. Especially Festus the Leechlord. That dude sucks. With my entire realm under assault and therefore having little chance to reinforce beleaguered armies, the army I got from the Enclave confederation was trapped in Erengrad when two of Festus' stacks rolled out of the western fog. First, he spread plague through the province, then the two stacks sieged, won and razed this beautiful city on the sea. Well, that army was running 3500 per turn and I could use the money haha. Lost several settlements, and some were re-won with counterattacks, but overall my realm shrunk in wave number two. I had expanded out to get a buffer just for this sort of reason, and those towns are considered expendable really. I can always colonize them after the wave if another faction doesn't get to them first, and honestly it's fine if they do, and it becomes their problem.

But thankfully I managed to pull off the army transfer with Katarin's army and get it restocked with Ice Guard and artillery and took my first dive, in to Nurgle's realm on Wormfood's recommendation.The realms aren't quite what I expected, not sure what I did expect really. I dropped in and moved to the goal and saw the Poxmaker had beaten me here. We weren't at war and I followed him, fighting the battles along the way. Got the immunity and then the Pox dude reached the end and I was kicked out with nothing to show for it. Dammit!

So I reloaded a couple turns earlier and this time attacked the Pox dude and now I sit outside the final battle, and if I win will have my first soul. I went in with 30% attrition reduction through the blue-line skill and that part is fine. The attrition is minor at this level, and encamp stance overcomes it at the cost of your movement speed thought the rift. I think I've taken too long, being cautious and all, and have picked up some nasty debuffs to speed and melee defense ahead of the last battle. We'll see how it goes, but my army is a strong one, way better than the one the Pox guy showed up with.

So far I like this campaign fine. It's different, frantic and has a good pace. I can deal with all of the action, but I wish it was factions other than Empire I was counting on. Their armies suck and they stand little chance when under sustained assault.

Nurgle's rift is done and dusted. The final battle was awesome. I really liked it. You have to fight your way forward through several waves of strong enemies which spawn all around to get to the showdown with the boss, who was no joke. Survival battle I believe is what these are called.

My army was two Tzar Guard, four Strelsi, two cav, two Grom artillery, one Frost Maiden and Katarin, and the rest was Ice Guard. The battle, being fought over such a large space, felt distinctly operational. I moved forward at each stage, identifying which paths I wanted to defend, kept rear guards and flank security in place, and performed a sort of bounding overwatch movement through the map. Very cool. Warhammer 2 has similar battles at times, but this one was even better.

When we hit the final stage, the demon boss appeared with a few strong units and this dude was tough. Just when it appeared we might get the better of him, an entire new army popped out and I said aloud 'are you fock!ng kidding me?" But then I started to really take advantage of the new supply and reinforcement mechanics and I was able to prevail with three reinforcement elemental bears. The ability to rearm my missile troops (which is all of them as a hybrid army) and heal health, winds of magic and stamina was a massive help, and I'm not certain I would have won without this. That was great and I hope the remaining rifts are just as much fun.

The combat is fantastic in Warhammer 3. It's everything that was great about WH2 but better. The AI is still pants, and god I wish CA would make them fight like a player does. At least the AI is better at using their cav units in flanking maneuvers to turn your flank and get at your missile and artillery troops. Aside from the AI's unimaginative maneuver, the battles are great. The combinations of so many wildly different unit types, spells and single-entity characters is a lot of fun, and it all gets flipped around with a different race in the next battle, with new challenges to overcome. In WH2 I often attempted to tailor my armies to the foe of the mo, but in RoC that's impossible, as each successive battle is against a different race.

Also, there are many small little tweaks and additions to WH3, quality of life changes that I really like. When I'm playing, I think I'll have to mention this and that in the forum. But when I go to type it up I seemed to have forgotten what they are. Among them are occlusion outlines on units to better pick them out of jumbled units and foliage. Allies are now color coded. The campaign map effects flash above a character when moving about the map, showing which effects he or she will impart in this province, like public order or income boosts. The diplomacy UI is much better, and quick deal is among the best changes CA has ever made to Total War. When you mouse over the kills for each unit in the battle debrief it shows a damage/gold ratio so you can see which units are performing best according to their cost. Clicking a unit in your army and then mousing over another will show the attribute deltas so you can quickly and easily compare their strengths and weaknesses (maybe WH 2, TW3K and others have this too?)

There are a hundred of these little tweaks, and Warhammer 3 is surely one of CA's best efforts, even if some will dislike the RoC campaign. With Immortal Empires out now too there can be few complaints I reckon. I waited a while to pick it up as the early returns were not all that glowing. But CA has patched it and tweaked it and surely there is more to come.

Took a dive in to Slaanesh's realm on rift wave number 3. The next turn N'Kari entered the realm and I suspected a race was on to reach the center. Slaanesh is all about seduction and debauchery, and the realm tries to tempt you with extravagant gifts. As you travel down through each portal you are given two choices, continue deeper, or accept these gifts and be ejected from the realm. And these are temptations that are hard to refuse. One of them was 75000 gold, +5 ranks for all lords and 200% growth! I stoically rejected all advances and continued on.

A turn or two after entering I had a look to see if I was still ahead of N'Kari and she was gone! She must have fallen to temptation, and the realm was mine alone to traverse. Down through each level to face the final battle, which was similar to the one in Nurgle's realm. Another big survival battle, and I was more ready for what was to come and got through without much trouble, Katarin's army now bolstered by Regiments of Renown, a halberd unit with AP and anti-large, and a monstrous bear riders unit also with AP and anti-large.. Final kill tally was 5100 to 200, but of course my casualties are mitigated by the ability to heal my troops. I used the same sort of bounding overwatch movement order, but this time with an even bigger army as I took full advantage of the reinforcements on offer, and at the end commanded a 40-unit stack. Once again, the elemental bears were key, as I put them on the enemy demon prince and they did the job.

That's two of the required four souls. Two other factions also have two, and Khorne got his third in wave three, so he's the one to beat. His last soul will be Slaanesh, and hopefully he falls afoul of the seduction and I can catch up. Two factions have one soul and Greasus Goldtooth has yet to get any. So I'm looking good if Khorne takes a rift wave off. I am sending a patriarch agent to his realm, in order to follow him around and close any rifts he might enter and sabotage his efforts. Insurance.